The Public Face of Shiadom's Islam

Here are some
images of the “new terrorists” propaganda system in the
making. Can you imagine the global headlines that Daniel Pipes, the
Jewish Islamophobe propagandist of the West, would give to these
images of self-flagellating blood-letting in Muharram during the
remembrance of the Memory
of Karbala
by the Shia devotees of Imam Hussein, aided and abetted by the
Valih-e-faqih, and assorted marja-e-taqlid Ayatollahs from Qom to
Najaf, who tacitly encourage this barbaric display of Shia faith by
silently condoning it, not issuing categorical injunctions against
it, when Dr. Pipes has most imaginatively already captioned “militant
Islam” and “radical Islam” as: “It's
Not a Clash of Civilizations, It's a Clash between the Civilized
World and Barbarians”?
Is this what Shiaism is all about --- is a question that is even
asked by the majority of the Sunni Muslims worldwide, never mind the
world's public.

Caption-1
The extremes to which the Shia devotees of Imam Hussein go to
commiserate with the martyrs of Karbala as the fast-path to heaven.
These self-inflicted wounds heal sooner than most people uninitiated
into this ritual might think. This display of faith and love for
Imam Hussein is virtually risk free, as people return to work with
at best minor discomfort for several days, and it's business as
usual. It is, evidently, still a lot easier to break blood from
one's own head, to soak in one's own blood once or twice a year in
remembrance of what the tyrant Yazid's army did to Imam Hussein and
his family in 61 A.H., than to stand up to the systems of oppression
in one's own time. Especially when such display of devotion, tears
and self-flagellation, elegiac poetry with narrative reenactment,
and walking for miles, often barefoot, in long processions to
commemorate the event of 61 A.H., even when there be threat to one's
life due to crackdown by authorities inimical to such remembrance,
is thought as the fast-path to Heaven. It is almost universally
believed by the Shia laity, regardless of which nation and culture
they might live in, that Imam Hussein would intercede on behalf of
his devotees on the Day of Judgment if they shed tears for his
misery. This belief is so strongly held that it has become the
predominant religious ethos of Shiadom.

Shedding
such tears of devotion is also virtually risk free, while
interfering with the imperatives of villainous power is always
hazardous in totalitarian systems. Even in supposed liberal systems,
such as democracy, the corruption of power is only disguised.
Despite the electorate, imperialism and hegemony, endless warfare
and police states, continue to thrive at the expense of the lesser
peoples. To say “NO” to the tyrant of the day, to
say “NO” to his imperialism and injustices, as Imam
Hussein and his womenfolk and children and handful of companions
did, is to lose one's livelihood, or worse, be shot dead for
dissent, when not incarcerated and tortured. This of course happens
only when one acquires the courage of Imam Hussein to say “NO”
to rulers and to their systems of corruption. But for the simpleton
Shia laity, instead of commemorating Imam Hussein's unflinching act
of categorical
imperative,
which the Imam had most elegantly summed up for the benefit of all
times in his now famous sentence: “a
man like me does not give oath of fealty to a man like Yazid”,
the devotees have been culturally trained to commemorate what the
bad guys did to the Imam. Not what the Imam did to the bad guys by
taking his stance!

What
Imam Hussein and his family suffered, surely remained unparalleled
throughout most of mankind's history when battles were fought on
horseback and with swords outside of civilian centers. Until
indiscriminate aerial bombardment of civilian centers became the
preferred military doctrine of the West in our modernity. What
happens from Palestine to Syria to Iraq to Libya to Pakistan to
Afghanistan to Yemen today, or what happened to Hamburg and Dresden
and Tokyo and Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, is not all
that physically different from what happened to the family of Imam
Hussein. Is it really worse to die from the sword of Yazid's army
with parched throats in the middle of 120 degrees heat in the
sweltering desert of Mesopotamia, than from an atom bomb, or daisy
cutter, or in a napalm fire-bomb inferno?

Therefore,
it follows that it is not the despicable and inhuman style of
martyrdom per se inflicted upon the noble Imam and his noble
children which is the point to ponder and remember and commemorate.
They, after all, died courageously in battle with sword in hand, by
choice. Why are manufactured tears extracted from the
devotees for what was a courageous self-sacrifice, a choice that was
deliberately made by the Imam? Why was that choice made by the Imam?
It is solely that act of the Imam and his entourage as a categorical
imperative, to stand up to Yazid, to be the exemplar of the
meaning of Islam, to say “NO” to the corruption and
reign of terror of vile power, to say “NO” to one's own
“banality
of evil”,
which is the point of Karbala –– as heinous and
barbaric, and naturally tear-jerking as the method of murdering the
grandchildren of the Prophet of Islam was.

The
Imam clearly anticipated his fate. It was not a surprise to him, as
his letters and conversations throughout his several months long
journey reveal. And yet, the Imam willingly chose that path which he
knew for sure would lead to certain death. On top of it, the Imam
took his womenfolk and children, knowing for sure that there was
certain death at the end of the road. Why did the Imam take that
path –– which today, to astute political minds whose
only imperative is to rule, would appear foolish and insane?

The
principal lesson to be learned, remembered, and acted upon, from the
Imam's stance that brought him to Karbala in a long journey
throughout which he invited Muslims to join him in the mission, and
for which he offered what is considered the supreme sacrifice,
was his categorical imperative, a fundamental teaching of
Islam.

That
teaching has mainly become relegated to elegiac poetry and religious
theses. The Muslims have been taught for centuries to practice
mainly the shell of Islam. That has resulted in ignoring its fruit,
which is almost always thrown away by all Muslims, each according to
their own shared ethos. The Deen-ul-Haq,
the Religion of Justice, to even enter whose fold first begins with
“NO”, has been transformed into the religion of idiotic
rituals which border on barbarism and superstition in Shiadom. In
the modern day and age, this self-flagellation and blood-letting
appears to be a throw-back to the Dark Ages, the age of Jahiliya
before the dawn of Islam, when people did all sorts of insane
rituals thinking their gods favored it.

This
dysfunction among the Shia Muslims has been aided and abetted
throughout the past fourteen centuries by the clergy class and their
thoughtless story tellers who have misguided and misdirected this
spontaneous devotion of the people to the Ahlul Bayt. That has
ensured that the tyrants remain free to do as they please. No
tyrant, no system of oppression, and no bastard, has ever even had a
butterfly stomach with this display of blood passion by Imam
Hussein's followers, let alone fear for his or her power. Something
has gone terribly awry with Muslims. An inheritance so profound, an
emotional attachment so unparalleled and global, that the devotees,
no matter where they live, in which time and in which space, shy not
from shedding their own blood in remembrance, generation after
generation, and century after century, and yet, still oppressed
everywhere. More images of extremes in blood-letting
self-flagellation during A'shura 2016 are here.
(Images gathered from various news reports on the web, please check
in the JPG image property for any copyright information of the
original source)

Caption-2 Can
anyone guess what Islamophobes would caption this display of
“revolutionary Islam” to frighten the Western audiences:
'It's Not a Clash of Civilizations, It's a Clash between the
Civilized World and Barbarians'! The latter headline has already
been employed by the Jewish reformer of Islam, Dr. Daniel Pipes, to
awaken the Western public against the curse of the Taleban's and the
Al-Qaeeda's version of “Islam” reaching them. Extending
the narrative to “Revolutionary Islam” is just around
the corner. Getting the two absurdities to wage an endless war in
the name of “Islam” that will snowball into a Shia-Sunni
world war,
with the Western audience disdainfully against both barbarians, and
the Western states along with their Eastern vassals, arming both
sides just as during the eight year long Iran-Iraq war, is the
obvious game-theorized scenario on the grand chessboard. Once
brought to the Russian-roulette table, it cannot be averted.
The time for its prevention is before the fait accompli is cast –
and all provocations are being brought to bear on this very
scenario, only the most recent of which is: Saudi
Arabia's grand mufti says Iranians are 'not Muslims'.

Caption-3 This
barbaric ritual in Shiadom, of splitting open one's head and drawing
blood from various parts of the body with swords and knives to mourn
the martyrdom of Imam Hussein and his family at Karbala in the year
61 A.H., has neither anything to do with the Religion of Islam, nor
with the principal
Message of Karbala:
“Qullo yomin A'shura, Qullo
Ardin Karbala”, and nor with
basic human dignity and decency. Where Imam Hussein exemplified
human dignity by freeing it from man's tyranny for all times,
Shiadom enslaved it back again in superstitions and behavior control
systems. The Shia clergy, by staying mute dumb and blind to
this barbaric public practice of the Shia devotees, have
demonstrated for centuries their own real qibla of allegiance: the
god of public opinion before which they too bow like the vulgar
politicians. Here is a lukewarm condemnation of this practice by the
Valih-e-Faqih-e-Muslimeen of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, falling way short of a categorical religious and legal
injunction banning it:

“It is
wrongful that some people hit themselves on the head with daggers to
break blood. What are they in search of? How can this be considered
an act of mourning? Of course light drumming on the head with one’s
own hand is a distinctive sign of mourning. You have seen it several
times when people are stricken by grief, they hit own their chests
or heads. This is a typical symbol of distress for mourning. But
when have you ever seen a person, who is grief stricken by the loss
of a dear loved one, take a dagger to their own head in order to
draw blood? How can this be a form of mourning?

Tatbir
[Qame Zani] is also a fabricated tradition. It is among issues that
do not belong to the Islamic religion and undoubtedly God is not
pleased with such a practice. Scholars among the last few centuries
did not have the opportunity to speak out and declare it as an
unlawful or wrongful act. However, today is the day of Islamic
establishment and the day for the manifestation of Islam. We should
not go along with actions that may introduce a small group of
irrational, superstitious individuals to Muslims and non-Muslims
alike, to be represented as the bulwark of the noble Islamic
society--the society that loves the progeny of the prophet (pbuh)
and has the honor to carry the names of the Imam of our Time (may
our souls be sacrificed for him), Imam Hussain Ibn Ali (as) and Imam
Ali Ibn Abi Talib (as).

The
more I thought about it (tatbir), the more I truly realized I cannot
overlook my responsibility of informing our dear people on Tatbir,
which is certainly an act of wrongdoing built upon heresy. Do not
practice it, I do not approve. If someone does anything to display
their desire to practice Tatbir, I will be deeply disappointed in
them. I am declaring this solemnly. This is certainly an unlawful
action, one which Imam Hussain (as) would not be pleased with, as
practiced today. I cannot fathom who would and based on what
evidence would they establish such peculiar and wrongful traditions
in Islamic societies and within our revolutionary society?

Tatbir is
one of those concerns which not only lacks logical reasoning, but is
also the nearest of things to superstition. Why do some promote such
things? This is a great danger, which has to be carefully tended to
within the world of religion and religious insight by the guardians
of the faith.” --- Ayatollah
Khamenei, June 07, 1994

Imagine
the thought experiment if you will, that you are taking an
undergraduate class in media studies under Dr. Joseph Goebbels of the
Third Reich --- come up with an emotionally tickling caption for
these images of the bloody ritual of A'shura that would effectively
rally the Western public to fight “revolutionary Islam”
with an equal or greater zeal than they have thus far waged “united
we stand” against “militant Islam”.

An authoritative
account of the Misrepresentations and Distortions in the
popular A'shura narratives heralded from the ubiquitous Shia pulpit
itself is given in the series of four lectures delivered in 1969 by
the notable Shia Iranian scholar Allama
Murtaza Mutahhari.
While ably capturing both the psychological motivations and the
misrepresentations and distortions made by latter day Shia pulpits
from Qom to Najaf, and from Karbala to India with reference to the
sacred penmanship of the pious scribes of history, the learned and
honest Iranian scholar notably failed to address the hagiographic
distortions in that sacred historical penmanship itself. A reportage
of the seminal events of Karbala compiled generations after the fact,
in a primitive tribal society by a partisan people not much different
than those occupying the pious pulpits today, but which is treated as
sacrosanct! Most revealingly, whatever is written in those earliest
historical narratives is treated as gospel truth by even the highest
authorities of the Shia pulpit in exactly the same way as the Sunni
pulpits treat their own hagiographic narratives of early Muslim
history.

What recuses
that early reportage of Muslim history from the same type of rigorous
intellectual examination for the same kinds of psychological
motivations, misrepresentations and distortions, made by the same
kind of fertile imaginations and fallible pens incestuously
reinforcing their own shared ethos both wittingly and unwittingly?
See Introduction
to Muslim Historiography
in my book Hijacking
the Holy Qur'an and Islam,
for elaboration upon this concept of taking recorded history with a
forensic measure, rather than an absolute or literal one. Making
history sacred has many more uses than mere academic
scholarship. It lies at the very heart of mass behavior control.
Novelist George Orwell most perceptively captured the utility of the
control of the narrative – what is penned ab initio, as well as
what is made sacred posthumously: “Who
controls the past controls the future; Who controls the present
controls the past”.

Reprint License

All
material copyright (c) Project HumanbeingsfirstTM, with
full permission to copy, repost, and reprint, in its entirety,
unmodified and unedited, for any purpose, granted in perpetuity,
provided the source URL sentence and this copyright notice are also reproduced verbatim as part
of this restricted Reprint License, along with any embedded links within its
main text, and not doing so may be subject to copyright license
violation infringement claims pursuant to remedies noted at
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html. All figures, images,
quotations and excerpts, are used without permission based on
non-profit "fair-use" for personal education and research
use only in the greater public interest, documenting crimes
against humanity, deconstructing current affairs, and scholarly
commentary. The usage by Project Humanbeingsfirst of all external
material is minimally consistent with the understanding of "fair
use" laws at http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html.
Project Humanbeingsfirst does not endorse any external website or organization it links to or references, nor those that may link to it or reprint its works.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 of US Copyright Laws, you
are provided the material from Project Humanbeingsfirst upon your
request, and taking any action that delivers you any of its documents
in any form is considered making a specific request to receive the
documents for your own personal educational and/or research use. You
are directly responsible for seeking the requisite permissions from
other copyright holders for any use beyond “fair use”.